Like many open source projects, CiviCRM is shaped, guided, and driven by
its community, a far-flung ecosystem of users, developers, and
implementers who utilize CiviCRM in many different ways and bring to it
a wide array of skills, experiences, and perspectives. These varied and
diverse offerings are crucial to the continued success of CiviCRM, but
they can move the project forward only if they find their way back into
the public stream of discussion and collaboration. This chapter is a
guide to finding and engaging in the community of people who are working
together to make CiviCRM what it is and what it will become.

As might be expected of a web-based software project, much of the
CiviCRM community's activity occurs online. This means that if you have
access to the Internet you also have access to and can participate in
the CiviCRM community regardless of where you live or work. English is
the predominant language for discussion and contributions.

The CiviCRM website itself is
a good starting point for exploring and participating in the community.
In addition to general information about getting and using CiviCRM,
you'll find blog posts from community members, announcements about
upcoming events, and a Get Involved section that
lists and links to many of the resources described below.

The CiviCRM Stack Exchange site is specifically designed for asking and answering questions about CiviCRM. This is now the primary site for getting answers to questions on installing, upgrading, configuring, using and customizing CiviCRM. It is a great place to find answers to the millions of questions that have already been asked about CiviCRM, and to ask ones that haven't been asked already.

Mattermost offers live discussion in chat rooms and direct messages. It's a great place to go for any technical questions. Here, with a bit of luck, you'll often find an instant answer to your question or a pointer in the right direction.

The CiviCRM Forums are a location for language and locality based CiviCRM discussion and support.

You'll hopefully find that both Stack Exchange and Mattermost are great
sources for help, support, and good ideas. That's all attributable to
the good will and generous efforts of people like you! Everyone who
visits these sites is encouraged to give back to the
community by responding to questions and requests for help and
contributing their own ideas and feedback to the conversations. And
simply asking your own questions is also a significant contribution to
the community. It's likely that someone else is having the same problems
or wondering the same thing, and the responses you solicit help build
the community's knowledge base.

The CiviCRM blog is
another good source of information and discussion. Blog posts are
written by both the CiviCRM core team and other community members and
cover a wide range of topics, including general news and announcements,
upcoming events and accounts of events that have occurred, case studies,
use cases and ways to get things done with CiviCRM, and new features and
development. Comments are encouraged and can create lively discussions
that can in turn direct future CiviCRM development. If you've got
something that you'd like to post on the blog, we encourage you to write
to info@civicrm.org with your ideas and your
request to post.

Much discussion of CiviCRM also occurs outside of these official
channels. Using your favorite engine to search for CiviCRM will turn up
many articles and posts from other folks' websites and blogs. The
CiviCRM team is good at keeping an eye out for these posts and often
publicize them through Twitter. To keep abreast of the stream of
comments, follow @civicrm and find CiviCRM tweets and tag your own
tweets with the #civicrm hashtag.

Though the online community is both accessible and active, participating
in the CiviCRM community offline can be even more rewarding and can help
you connect with others in your area who are developing, implementing,
and using CiviCRM.

Many cities and regions hold CiviCRM meetups where people gather to
learn about CiviCRM, share new ideas, developments, and use cases, and
meet other folks involved with the community. CiviCRM also conducts user and developer training in cities around the world. Stay abreast of local events, whether meetups, trainings, or sprints here.

There are also more formal gatherings for CiviCRM users and developers. CiviCRM held the first CiviCon conference in April 2010 in San
Francisco. CiviCon brings together prospective and current end-users, administrators and developers of CiviCRM for content-rich discussions, lectures and networking. The number of CiviCons hosted around the world each year is growing.

CiviCamps are one-day, action packed meetups where you can learn about CiviCRM, connect with other users, ask questions, share tips, and more. See if there are any upcoming CiviCamps near you.

CiviCRM core developers and community members also make appearances at
other conferences, including DrupalCon, the NonProfit Technology
Conference, Joomla! events, and Aspiration Tech events.

Contribute content to CiviCRM's website. You can share use cases and case studies that describe how your organization uses CiviCRM and the solutions and processes you've developed around
the software. See existing case studies here. You can also share your successes, experiences at Civi-related
events, interesting customizations, etc. on the
CiviCRM blog. You can add content by becoming a member or emailing info@civicrm.org with a request to post.

Share your training resources and materials with the rest of the
community through posts on the CiviCRM
blog or on your own sites.

Register your organization on CiviCRM's website. This will add your site to a publicly searchable directory and map of CiviCRM installations, supporting CiviCRM's marketing efforts.

Contribute code you've written to extend CiviCRM, because it's
likely that someone else out there needs the same functionality.
Check out the recommended steps for developing and contributing to
the CiviCRM how you can help contribute to the core codebase
in the Developer Guide.
If you've developed a Drupal module, you should contribute it to
Drupal.org; see
their site for more
information on contributing modules. Joomla! extensions can be
posted here.

Sponsor development of new features. If your organization needs
certain features or functionality that doesn't yet exist for CiviCRM
and can't develop those features in-house, you can sponsor their
development by outside coders and developers. This can be a solo
effort on the part of one organization or a coordinated effort
sponsored by multiple organizations in need of the same set of
functionality. Find out more on
CiviCRM's website
or write to info@civicrm.org for more
information on sponsoring development.

Report any bugs that you find in CiviCRM. See the Bug Reporting
chapter of this book for more information.